Nintendo says it is probing copycats who lure smartphone users with mobile "Mario"

A Bloomberg report said that a number of companies had been ripping off Nintendo Corp's intellectual properties and been using them for their own advantage in the mobile gaming market.

Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter in Los Angeles said to the news agency via email, "Misappropriation of intellectual property is hard to prevent in China. (Nintendo) should be exploiting their IP on their own instead of letting others do so."

For example, a mobile game aptly titled "Super Mario" was available for download on the 91 Wireless online application store of Baidu Inc and the online China app store of Samsung Electronics Co yesterday for Chinese customers. This app was particularly curious considering the fact that Nintendo has an unwritten mandate to not extend their business in mobile gaming. Several app developers had been also observed to have taken advantage of using some of the famous characters of the Kyoto-based company, Bloomberg said.

When the news agency asked Nintendo, spokesman Yasuhiro Minagawa said on February 19 that the apps Bloomberg had identified were not official apps nor are approved by the company, and that its legal team is currently conducting a probe on the matter. Upon follow-up, however, Minagawa was tight-lipped about the potential legal actions that Nintendo could be pursuing due to copyright infringement.

Bloomberg als asked Beijing Flyfish Technology Co, the developer of mobile app "Super Mario" and co-founder Zhu Jinbiao defended his company's use of the title and the corporate brand of Nintendo. He stated in an interview, "There were already some similar kinds of PC-based games using flash technology. Our game is similar to those. Some parts are like the original. Some parts we've changed."

It was noted that Samsung has pulled out "Super Mario" from its China-focused app store late yesterday, Bloomberg said. The South Korean company issued a statement about the app pull-out, which read, "The service of the application that was reported to have violated the intellectual right has been halted based on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Samsung has informed the issue to the application seller."

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Nintendo smarthphone apps, Nintendo Corp, Beijing Flyfish Technology Co

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